Hayden Vink: Life In The Fast Lane

UPDATE - 2/9/09 - After a few emails back and forth, my supplier asked me to return the unit and subsequently discovered a hardware fault. They sent me a new unit immediately, and it worked perfectly. In fact, it is currently vying with my iPhone for the illustrious title of “Hayden’s Gadget of the Year: 2008″. More on that later. I still think the software bundling idea I mention below is a good one.

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My new scanner arrived yesterday; a Fujitsu ScanSnap that I bought to help me realise the paper-less home office dream.

I eagerly unpacked it, installed the software, plugged it in, put some documents in the feeder, hit the ’scan’ button, then . . received an error message stating that the scan had been unsuccessful, and suggesting my system was unstable and needed to be rebooted. 

To cut a long story short, I spent several hours trying to fix the problem. I tried every troubleshooting idea I can think of: different versions of Adobe Acrobat; installing latest scanner driver and management software; different computer etc.

But none of these worked, so I’ve given up and want to return the scanner. I’m waiting to hear from the supplier about this.

I suspect that the cause of the problem is most likely to be that the scanner management software is not compatible with the operating system version I’m using. Either that, or the version of Adobe Acrobat.

All of which makes me wonder: surely, there’s a better way to manage a product’s shelf life?

Here’s how I think it should be done:

• Products are packaged in such a way that the bundled software can easily be removed/replaced by the supplier/seller
• The manufacturer keeps a close eye on developments/events such as the release of a new operating system version, and alerts the supplier/seller immediately if any of the bundled software will no longer be appropriate*
• The supplier/seller removes the bundled software and stops selling and/or shipping products until the manufacturer supplies a new software bundle

I believe that if my supplier had adopted this system for managing shelf life, my experience with this scanner would have been entirely different - and considerably better.

* This includes ‘compatible’ but is not just that; for example, Adobe Acrobat 7 is ‘compatible’ with my operating system, but is now very out-of-date - Adobe Acrobat 8 was released in November 2006, and Adobe Acrobat 9 was released in July 2008.